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What, precisely, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial congressional authority, has become a murky prerogative of the presidential office in the time since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, conducting military actions on boats in the Caribbean Sea.

The authority over spending appears to be largely been stripped from the legislative branch too; currently, under the office of management and budget director, the OMB director, a great deal of the ability to allocate government money has likewise shifted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the authority to cancel legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to redirect the funds elsewhere. It’s as if they’re enacting any laws, anyway; almost all legislation must now be packed into spending packages, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can bypass the filibuster. But when those fail to be approved – and increasingly, they don’t – the government just ceases operations. At least, big parts of the government do – and it’s uncertain how many citizens are aware. At present, the federal government has been shut down all month; there are little indication of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can seem rather moot. Why should Americans care who has a majority in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may help the state of California’s Prop 50 succeed

And yet Proposition 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could provide five additional congressional positions to the Democrats if it is approved by the electorate in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. In part, it is a belated reaction to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have for a long time adopted dramatic biased redistricting while big Democratic-controlled such as the Golden State, the Empire State and Washington create their maps via impartial independent commissions, an imbalance that has resulted in narrowly split control of the House and a long-term feeling, by the left, that their political group is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is clearly designed as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that was recently approved in the Lone Star State, which installed maps that will provide the GOP an five more seats in the state congressional delegation in the upcoming term; similar boundary changes are under way in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are likewise following California’s lead in attempting to alter districts.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive electorate react with concern and frustration to the president’s authoritarian consolidation of authority and seek ways to check his worst tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some opponents caution that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Different critics have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological democratic bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a manner that the result of the vote is never really in question, they argue, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is suppressed, and that the procedure of deliberation, discussion and convincing that is meant to define a functioning democratic process will be confined only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that the measure will spur the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a logical argument: it does not make sense to claim that the GOP will be made to behave in undemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already engaging in such behavior without those steps. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any incentive of revenge to redraw maps that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete absence of Democratic reciprocation, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more significant, reflecting not just a tactical difference about how to address the GOP’s undemocratic turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that the majority of the left, it is believed, desire and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate disfavored demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the reverse; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these measures have grown necessary in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and reduce the level of suffering he is capable to cause is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from a state more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If Congress does not in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations authority, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s five new Democratic representatives will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress continues to retains is subpoena power, and the ability to examine. Even in our time of sclerotic government and legislative decline, it has made use of that authority to significant impact. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and the state’s new representatives are sworn in, they will become a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his conduct and to force members of his close advisors to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not anything that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer